The Sales Market Heats Up

*More than two years after CBS Radio put
its Rochester cluster up for sale, the last of the stations in
the group have finally found new owners. On Thursday, Entercom,
which bought the CBS cluster but had to spin three signals to
stay under the ownership cap, announced that it's reached a deal
with Oklahoma's Stephens Media Group to buy AC "Warm"
WRMM (101.3 Rochester), adult hits "Fickle" WFKL (93.3
Fairport) and modern rock "Zone" WZNE (94.1 Brighton). Purchase price is a reported $13.25 million, which NERW notes is about half of the number we heard being floated for the stations when they first went up for sale, a sign of the seismic downward shift in station sale prices in recent months.

At
the direction of the FCC and the Justice Department last November,
Entercom put those three stations (WRMM and WZNE from the original
CBS cluster and WFKL from Entercom's own cluster) into a "hold-separate"
arrangement known as the Rochester Radio Group. Under the terms
of the FCC/Justice deal, the stations were to go into a trust
if no buyer was found after six months, and the trust documents
were filed April 17. (It's not immediately clear whether the
stations will still be transferred to trustee David Pearlman
and then to Stephens, or if the FCC will allow Entercom to sell
them directly to Stephens.)

While the lawyers do their thing, Stephens wasted no time
taking over operation of the stations under a JSA. Cluster manager
Mike Ninnie stays in place as Stephens' market manager, and all
three stations' formats remain in place for now, too. Citing
budget considerations, Stephens let at least three employees
go, though - WRMM morning co-host Dee Alexander, Fickle newsman
Bob Kirk and at least one behind-the-scenes staffer.

Entercom's Mike Doyle tells the Democrat and Chronicle
that Alexander remains an Entercom employee, albeit without
a station for now; Kirk is on the beach and looking for new work.

The
changes at WRMM leave veteran morning man Tony Infantino without
his longtime partner (the "Tony and Dee" show came
together on the former WVOR in 1988, and the 1994 WRMM talent
raid that brought the pair over to Warm 101 is widely viewed
as having brought about WVOR's downfall.)

On the air by himself Friday morning, Infantino acknowledged
that it had been a difficult few days at the Rochester Radio
Group studios (where we hear morale has been low in recent months
as the status of the stations has remained uncertain), and he
noted that Alexander's dismissal is only the latest in a series
of talent shakeups in Rochester radio in recent months.

Rochester becomes Stephens' biggest market, and the most expensive
piece thus far of the Oklahoma company's move into upstate New
York. Last fall, Stephens bought Regent's Watertown stations
and Tim Martz's cluster up in the North Country, and thus far
there have been few changes at those stations. Back home in Oklahoma,
Stephens is best known for its network of contemporary Christian
stations around Tulsa, based at KXOJ-FM (100.9 Sapulpa OK); it
also owns several sports-talk stations in the Tulsa market.

Can a modern rocker like WZNE - one with a provocative morning
jock, Cleveland's Rover, no less - be a good fit with the rest
of Stephens' growing radio empire? Will the group's cost-cutting
efforts include a move from the former CBS studios at the HSBC
Plaza office tower, where much of the space now sits empty and
the lease is up in a few months? (And could that space be a natural
fit for Clear Channel's cluster, whose current Midtown Plaza
home is soon to be demolished? NERW notes that the HSBC space
includes the former WCMF Brother Wease studio, now vacant but
with furniture intact, and we're sure Wease would relish the
opportunity to move back into his old space when he returns to
the air on Clear Channel's WFXF later this year...)

And perhaps the biggest question - can a small operator like
Stephens compete with the bigger clusters and much deeper pockets
of Entercom and Clear Channel? At least from where we sit, cutting
popular local personalities like Alexander and Kirk just to make
budget doesn't look like a good sign, but we'll be watching with
great interest to see what Stephens' plans are for its new stations.

GETCHER 2008 TOWER SITE CALENDAR
- BEFORE THEY'RE ALL GONE!

Still haven't ordered your 2008 Tower Site Calendar?
You do realize that it's now...er...2008, don't you? We're already
down to the last 40 or so calendars, and they're going
fast. The 2006 and 2007 editions of the calendar sold out, and
this one will do so as well, possibly as soon as this month.

This year's edition is a particularly
fine one, if we do say so ourselves. From the cover photo of
KAST in Astoria, Oregon to the back cover shot of the Blaw-Knox
diamond tower at WBNS in Columbus, this year's calendar features
14 all-new full-color shots of famous broadcast sites far and
wide. There's KROQ in Los Angeles, KFBK in Sacramento, WESX in
Salem, WGAN in Portland, Black Mountain in Vegas, Mount Spokane
in Spokane, and many (ok, several) more.

The calendar is just $18 with
shipping and handling included - or better yet, beat our move
to mandatory subscriptions later this year and get a free calendar
with your $60 subscription to NERW for 2008. (Remember, the proceeds
from both the calendar and the subscriptions help keep NERW right
here on the web, as we head into our fourteenth year of news
and analysis.)

So click
right here and you can be sure to have your very
own Tower Site Calendar 2008! (And thank you!)

The 2008 Tower
Site Calendar is dedicated to the memory of Robert Eiselen (1934-2007),
whose digital imaging skills made even a bunch of pictures of
radio towers look almost like art. His contributions were essential
to the calendar's evolution from 2003 to the current edition,
and he will be missed dearly.

*After the success of its first syndicated evening offering,
the "Your Time with Kim Iverson" show that began airing
on many of its AC stations (including Buffalo's WTSS 102.5) a
few months ago, Entercom is trying out a syndicated evening show
on its country stations, including Rochester's WBEE-FM (92.5)
and Scranton's "Froggy" WGGY (101.3 Scranton)/WGGI
(95.9 Benton).

"2nd Shift with Alan Kabel" launched last Monday
night on those and five other Entercom country stations nationwide.
Megan Carter had been holding down the 7-midnight shift on WBEE
that Kabel's show now occupies; she's down the hall at WPXY (97.9)
doing middays now.

There's a morning show vacancy in Binghamton, where Kristie
is departing WHWK (98.1) to move to Florida with her family.
That leaves the "Glenn and Kristie" morning show with
just Glenn for now, until PD Don Brake can find a new co-host.

*The
big news from New York City was the official announcement that
John R. Gambling will indeed be returning to the station he and
his family called home from 1925 until 2000. The new "John
Gambling Show" debuts this morning on WOR (710), where it
will be heard from 5:30-9 AM on weekdays. Joe Bartlett stays
on to do a 5-5:30 morning news block, then serve as Gambling's
co-host and news anchor for the rest of the show. Bartlett's
former co-host, Donna Hanover, remains with the station as arts
critic and fill-in host, and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg,
who'd been appearing weekly with Gambling over at WABC until
Citadel let Gambling go, will make a regular Friday-morning appearance
on the new WOR show.

Another veteran of both WOR and WABC is celebrating a rare
anniversary next week. Bob Grant will mark his 60th anniversary
in radio May 14. His long career took him from the Chicago suburbs
to Los Angeles, then to New York in 1970, where he spent seven
years as a pioneering talker on WMCA. After several years at
WOR, then at WWDB in Philadelphia, Grant returned to New York
in 1984 for a 12-year stint in afternoon drive at WABC, then
went to WOR after a high-profile firing from WABC in 1996. He's
been back at WABC since last year, in the 8-10 PM shift.

Speaking of veterans, Ted David became the youngest newscaster
ever heard on WABC back in 1967, when the then-18-year-old ABC
page talked his way into a job with PD Rick Sklar while many
of the regular staffers were out on strike. David went on to
college radio on Long Island (WCWP), full-time work at several
stations including WPIX-FM, then eight years with ABC Radio News
before becoming part of the inaugural anchor team at the new
CNBC cable network in 1989. Now David is about to retire from
CNBC, where he's spent the last few years as senior anchor of
CNBC Business Radio. He says he's not getting out of the business
entirely; he'll continue to do some anchoring on News 12 Long
Island, and he's been talking "with several NY and national
radio and TV outlets" about work.

Clear Channel's new cluster studio for all of its New York
City FMs is about to get its final tenant. We're hearing that
May 9 is the scheduled move-in date for WLTW (106.7), the last
of the five FMs to move from its old studios (at 1133 Avenue
of the Americas, in this case) to the new digs at 32 Avenue of
the Americas. And how often is a radio station facility featured
in the New York Times? The new Clear Channel studios were
the star of Sunday's "Square
Feet" column in the paper.

WRXP (101.9 New York) has named a second air personality.
Brian Phillips, who'll be known simply as "Phillips"
on the evening shift at RXP, was last heard as half of the "Brian
and Jen Show" in morning drive at "G-Rock Radio"
(WHTG-FM 106.3/WBBO 106.5) on the Jersey Shore, where he was
also assistant PD.

Out on Long Island, WIN Radio Broadcasting Corp. has been
granted a renewal of its license for WNYH (740 Huntington), over
two objections to the renewal filed with the FCC. Rob Jeantet
(aka Rob Jontay, who once provided programming to the station)
alleged that the station failed to maintain a proper main studio
or EAS equipment, that it failed to provide him with programming
logs, and that it "abandon[ed its] English language/music
based format to play a solely Korean language religious
service for the entire Sunday broadcast day." Ralph Amitrano
charged that WNYH was serving the public interest of Flushing,
Queens, rather than its city of license of Huntington; he also
claimed that the station had been off the air much of the past
eight years, and that it was operating over-power at night. WIN
rebutted all the claims, noting that WNYH has been operating
below its licensed power under an STA by day, and has been off
the air entirely at night. The company said it's installed working
EAS equipment and maintains a proper studio, noted that foreign-language
programming is completely legal, and it points out that there's
no legal requirement for program logs to be maintained or made
available to the public.

A public broadcasting pioneer has died. After founding KQED
in San Francisco and serving as that station's leader for 15
years, James Day came to New York in 1969 as president of the
newly-merged National Educational Television; when the network
merged with WNDT (Channel 13) the following year, Day became
president of that station (now WNET) as well, serving until 1973.
Day was also host of the public TV interview show "Day at
Night," and a professor of rfadio and television at Brooklyn
College/CUNY. He died April 24 of respiratory failure, at the
age of 89.

*There's
a station sale at the top of our PENNSYLVANIA news, too:
Cary Simpson's Allegheny Mountain Network is selling its biggest
signal, WGMR (101.1 Tyrone), to Forever Broadcasting, already
the dominant player in the region.

Forever will pay $2.5 million over ten years for the station
in a deal that includes a noncompete for that ten-year period,
as well as translators W267AC (101.3 Altoona) and W264BB (100.7
Lewistown).

And that's not the only sale in Happy Valley this week - in
order to stay under the ownership cap of six stations in the
State College market, Forever is selling a station, too, as Nick
Galli's 2510 Licenses pays $1.2 million for "Froggy"
country WSGY (98.7 Pleasant Gap), which has been simulcasting
Forever's WFGY (98.1 Altoona).

What will Forever do with WGMR, which has shifted formats
over the years through several variants of rock, and is now top
40 "G101"? Rumors of a format change are rampant, and
it's hard not to note that if Forever decides to hang on to the
"Froggy" format from WSGY, the big class B WGMR signal
would create a seamless web of big "Froggy" signals
across west central Pennsylvania, including WFGY in Altoona and
WFGI (95.5) in Johnstown.

We should note as well that Forever's move of the WNTJ news-talk
format and calls to WPRR (1490 Johnstown) involves an LMA; the
FCC has yet to approve the sale of WPRR back to Forever from
2510, with several other Johnstown-area broadcasters objecting
to the deal. There are new calls for WNTJ's former home at 850
on the dial - it's now WKGE - and we'd expect to see a filing
to change WPRR's calls to WNTJ on 1490 any moment now.

All
week long last week, the 850 signal was broadcasting a repeating
loop directing WNTJ listeners up the dial; over the weekend,
it flipped to a simulcast of talker WWGE (1400 Loretto), which
is apparently leasing time from 850's new owner, Birach, to expand
the signal of its "Edge" talk programming into the
Johnstown market.

(Here's an only-in-NERW historical note - the 850/1400 simulcast
brings both stations' histories full-circle, in a sense: the
1400 frequency became available for use in Loretto in the early
sixties after WJAC in Johnstown moved from its original home
on 1400 to the 850 facility that's now WKGE.)

*In other Keystone State news, KDKA (1020 Pittsburgh) has
hired a new news anchor from upstate New York. Matt Delsignore
comes to KD from WGY (810 Schenectady); before that, he'd worked
at WSYR in Syracuse and WTNY in Watertown. He's part of an expansion
of news at KDKA that will find him reporting for the station's
afternoon drive news blocks and anchoring new local newscasts
at 7, 8, 9 and 10 PM.

Speaking
of KDKA, "Radio's Best Friend," video producer Art
Vuolo, has acquired a pallet of bricks that he says are the last
remnants of KDKA's original home at Building K of Westinghouse's
East Pittsburgh works, which was demolished last year - and he's
now selling the bricks, complete with commemorative plaques and
certificates signed by several former KDKA personalities, via
his website at vuolovideo.com.
(NERW notes that KDKA itself sold slices of its old tower in
the mid-nineties, with proceeds benefiting the local children's
hospital; and we'd note with some pride that our own collection
of radio relics includes an even rarer KDKA-related brick, personally
salvaged a few years back from the demolition of the Conrad Garage
that was the birthplace of KDKA's predecessor, 8XK.)

We'll do the full New York-Penn League baseball-on-the-radio
lineup when that short-season A league begins play in mid-June
(go Muckdogs!), but there's one affiliation change to report:
the Williamsport Crosscutters get their first full-season pickup
in team history. WLYC (1050) will broadcast all the games, with
Todd Bartley handling play-by-play.

*Another long-delayed station sale suddenly
became a reality late last week, as Clear Channel exited MAINE
with an $11 million sale of its Bangor and Augusta/Waterville
clusters to Blueberry Broadcasting, a new company whose principals
are Louis Vitali, late of Mariner Broadcasting (which owned Maine's
"W-Bach" stations and still owns WCCC in Hartford)
and Bruce Biette, a former Maine broadcaster who's been involved
with Convergent Broadcasting down south.

We'd
been hearing rumors about this deal for several months, as it
apparently became stalled in the drama surrounding Clear Channel's
attempts to go private and to sell many of its smaller clusters.
At one point, the Maine stations were included in the list of
signals being transferred to GoodRadio.TV, a sale that was never
consummated.

Now the signals are going into Blueberry's hands - 17 of them,
in all. In Bangor, the company gets talker WABI (910 Bangor),
AC WKSQ (94.5 Ellsworth), top 40 WWBX (97.1 Bangor), country
WLKE (99.1 Bar Harbor), modern rock WFZX (101.7 Searsport), oldies
WGUY (102.1 Dexter), talk WVOM (103.9 Howland) and country WBFB
(104.7 Brewer), but due to ownership caps, it will have to spin
off two of those signals, WFZX and WGUY.

*Steve Silberberg has added
a new simulcast for his AAA WXRV (92.5 Andover) in north central
MASSACHUSETTS. "The River" is already heard
on WLKC (105.7 Campton NH), and now it's expanded west down Route
2 to the former WNYN (99.9 Athol), which drops its satellite-delivered
classic rock format and its calls to become WXRG, a straight
simulcast of 92.5. The WXRG calls come from Silberberg's 99.1
in Whitefield, NEW HAMPSHIRE, which now takes the WNYN
calls.

WTKK (96.9 Boston) is tweaking its weekend lineup. The talk
station is adding a new local show from 11 AM-1 PM on Saturdays,
hosted by Joe Ligotti (aka "The Guy from Boston" from
WFXT's morning show and Fox News Channel) and Lawrence "Huggy"
Bergman, late of WYSP (94.1 Philadelphia)'s "Matt and Huggy
Show."

And out west, there's word that morning news anchor Tom Jay
(Jaworski) is retiring later this month after a remarkable 42
years at WSBS (860 Great Barrington).

*Almost six months after Clear Channel launched
"Radio 104-One" (WURH 104.1 Waterbury) in CONNECTICUT,
the rock station finally has a PD. She's Becky Pohotsky, who's
been the station's APD/MD and de facto PD for most of its existence.
And she's hired an assistant - Michael Czarnecki comes aboard
from WBCN in Boston.

*In CANADA, there's a new signal on the
air in Hawkesbury, Ontario. Evanov launched CKHK (107.7 the Jewel)
last week with an easy listening/soft AC format similar to its
Jewel stations in Toronto (CKDX 88.5) and Ottawa (CJWL 98.5).

Canada is much stricter than the US when it comes to granting
relay transmitters for stations hoping to extend their coverage.
Just ask CFRM (100.7 Little Current ON), which has been turned
down in its bid to add a new transmitter in Sudbury, 100 km or
so east of its home base on Manitoulin Island. Despite CFRM's
argument that many Sudbury residents have vacation homes on Manitoulin,
the CRTC ruled that CFRM's programming would not be of sufficient
interest to merit the extra signal.

In "cottage country" north of Toronto, Muskoka-Parry
Sound Broadcasting is applying for a big power increase at CFBK
(105.5 Huntsville); the station would jump from 5 kW to 43.4
kW/147 m.

In Montreal, Radio Moyen Orient's CHOU (1450) has been granted
a doubling of its power, from 1000 to 2000 watts, which should
give it a somewhat better signal in downtown Montreal and the
South Shore. Down Autoroute 40 in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Yves Sauve
has been granted the use of 100.1 (with 550 watts) for the new
station he was granted last year. Sauve had applied for 106.3,
but that frequency instead went to a new signal in Montreal;
Radio-Canada objected to the use of 100.1, on a third-adjacent
channel to its CBFX (100.7 Montreal), but that objection was
denied as well.

And we're sorry to report the death Friday (May 2) of Marc
(Webber) Chambers, who started his broadcast career in western
Canada, but came east to work at CKGM in Montreal, CJOJ in Belleville
and CHUM in Toronto. Chambers was most recently heard as the
evening jock on CHUM. He had been battling cancer, and was just
52.

From
the NERW Archives

(Yup, we've been doing this a long time now, and
so we're digging back into the vaults for a look at what NERW
was covering one, five and ten years ago this week, or thereabouts
- the column appeared on an erratic schedule in its earliest
years as "New England Radio Watch," and didn't go to
a regular weekly schedule until 1997. Thanks to LARadio.com
for the idea - and thanks to you, our readers, for the support
that's made all these years of NERW possible!)

May 7, 2007 -

*Clear Channel Radio is getting closer to its goal of selling
off 448 stations in its smaller markets - including all of its
holdings in the state of MAINE, which are among the stations
being sold to a new company called "Goodradio.TV,"
headed by former ion TV (ex-Pax) president Dean Goodman.

We know, as this week's NERW comes to you late Sunday night,
that Goodradio will end up with about 180 of those 448 stations,
and that Clear Channel has found buyers for another 182 stations,
and we expect to find out for certain which of those stations
go where before the week is out. In the meantime, though, the
news of Goodradio's Maine plans leaked early - and we now know
that our original speculation that Clear Channel would exit Maine
completely proved to be correct.

There's been no official announcement yet of the fate of
Clear Channel's remaining stations in VERMONT, but whoever ends
up with them will get some new formats at two of the signals.

In Randolph, WTSJ (1320) had been simulcasting WTSL (1400
Hanover NH), which Clear Channel has already sold - so now it's
switching originating stations to CC's "Zone" simulcast
from Burlington, already heard on WXZO (96.7 Willsboro NY) and
WEAV (960 Plattsburgh NY). Much of the syndicated programming
already heard on WTSJ was on "The Zone" anyway, so
Randolph-area listeners to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity won't
experience any disruption. In the Burlington market, Clear Channel
pulled the plug on "Kiss" top 40 at WVTK (92.1 Port
Henry NY), replacing it with oldies from ABC's True Oldies Channel,
the service programmed by Scott Shannon. No local jocks here,
and we wouldn't expect to hear any until after the station and
its Burlington sisters are sold, if even then.

There was a tower collapse in CONNECTICUT during the big
storm there last month: the 188-foot tower of WYBC (1340 New
Haven) succumbed to the storm's high winds late on the night
of April 14, toppling into the swamp where it sits. (It took
several days for the weather to calm down sufficiently for the
tower's remains to even be found in the swamp, we're told.) WYBC
quickly returned to the air with a longwire antenna. The collapse
was blamed on a guy-wire anchor that had corroded to "the
thickness of a pencil," says engineer Clif Mills, and a
replacement tower will soon be erected at the same site.

The big news from NEW YORK last week continued to be the
fallout from the Don Imus affair, including Imus' reported $120
million lawsuit against his former employer, CBS Radio. At WFAN
(660), this week's guest hosts in the former Imus slot include
John and Pat McEnroe through Wednesday, then Geraldo Rivera later
in the week, with no indication of any permanent replacement.
Over at sister station WFNY-FM (92.3 Free FM), midmorning hosts
JV & Elvis are still suspended as well, with the "best-of"
shows that aired last week giving way to guest hosts this week,
including Cabbie and Larry Wachs.

The start of May brought a format swap at two Nassau stations
on the PENNSYLVANIA/NEW JERSEY line. Classic hits WSBG (93.5
Stroudsburg PA) lost morning man Gary Smith to the Imus fallout
a few weeks back, and on Thursday, the station vanished completely
when Nassau moved soft AC "Lite" down the dial from
its former home at WWYY (107.1 Belvidere NJ). The new "Lite
93.5" is running jockless for the moment, as is the new
format on 107.1 - classic rock "107.1 the Bone," complete
with the syndicated "Free Beer and Hot Wings" morning
show.

May 5, 2003 -

*It's not as though the state capital of NEW YORK doesn't
have enough FM signals - between the 80-90 drop-ins of recent
years and a slew of move-ins from the surrounding countryside,
the Albany market now encompasses some 21 commercial FMs. But
if a proposal now before the FCC is accepted, there will soon
be a 22nd: the station that's now WNYQ (105.7 Queensbury), an
hour north of Albany in the Glens Falls market.

Vox Radio is asking the FCC to change WNYQ's allocation from
105.7B1 in Queensbury (where WNYQ now runs 1570 watts at 1273
feet above average terrain) to 105.7A in Malta, a town of about
2000 people along I-87 near the Saratoga-Schenectady county line,
well within the Albany radio market. Since the move would leave
Queensbury without "first local service" (never mind
that it can easily pick up nearly a dozen local Glens Falls stations,
not to mention most of Albany), Vox would then change the allocation
of WCQL (95.9 Glens Falls) to Queensbury - and just for good
measure, create a new "first" service on 105.9A at
Indian Lake, where routes 28 and 30 meet high in the Adirondacks
between North Creek and Blue Mountain Lake.

This isn't the first such move in the Glens Falls area; in
fact, it was just a couple of years ago that WHTR moved from
93.5 Corinth to 93.7 Scotia (just outside Schenectady), sending
WFFG (107.1) from Hudson Falls to Corinth to compensate. And
it wasn't all that long ago, for that matter, that Saratoga Springs'
102.3 moved south to Ballston Spa to become the Albany-market
station that's now "Kiss" WKKF. And the allocations
beat goes on...

The former "Jukebox Radio" translators, W232AL
(94.3 Pomona NY) and W276AQ (103.1 Fort Lee NJ) are getting a
new life: owner Gerry Turro has filed to sell them to "Bridgelight
Corp.", the company that bought WPDQ (89.7 Freehold Township
NJ) last year and turned it into a religious station. W232AL
has been silent since the Jukebox feed from WJUX (99.7 Monticello)
ended; W276AQ has been relaying WKHL (96.7 Stamford CT), except
when the atmosphere has offered up other signals instead...and
as we post this from our downstate "alternate" base
Sunday night, both translators are on the air with WKHL's audio.
(And we checked WJUX on the way down; it's still running infomercials
mixed with occasional bits of oldies - and still ID'ing and promoting
itself as though it's being heard in New Jersey...)

A format change in western PENNSYLVANIA started off the month
of May - so far west, in fact, that it's really the Youngstown,
Ohio market. We never really understood why WLLF (96.7 Mercer)
was running smooth jazz to begin with, but now we can stop wondering
- Cumulus pulled that format last Thursday and replaced it with
oldies as "Oldies 96.7." The oldies, in turn, came
off sister station WWIZ (103.9 Mercer), which stunted with construction
noises before flipping to rock as "Rock 104."

And the big news from CANADA is the retirement of the legendary
Moses Znaimer from his post as president of CHUM Television.
Znaimer was one of the founders of CITY-TV (originally channel
79, now channel 57) in Toronto in 1972, breaking the staid mold
of most TV to create a multicultural, interactive, high-energy
TV station that really seemed to be, as its slogan claimed, "Everywhere."
(Any time you see a TV anchor or host moving around a working
newsroom instead of sitting behind a desk, that's Znaimer you
should be thanking.) Znaimer will remain in charge of a group
of educational TV channels partially owned by CHUM, and he'll
continue working on his "MZTV" television museum...and
it's safe to say we haven't heard the last of him any time yet.
(2008 update - Znaimer's now in radio, running classical CFMZ-FM
and standards CHWO in Toronto.)

May 7, 1998-

The FCC has shut down a CONNECTICUT pirate station for a
third time. Agents visited La Nueva Radio Musical's latest location,
on Saltonstall Avenue in New Haven, on Wednesday afternoon to
pull the plug on the unlicensed 104.5 MHz operation. The station's
operators tell the New Haven Register they hope to be back on
in a few days, and they say they're disappointed that Congresswoman
Rosa De Lauro hasn't been more responsive to the petition they
presented to her office at a rally last month.

Two Hartford-area pirates remain on the air undisturbed,
meanwhile. Praise 105.3 continues its gospel programming, which
NERW first heard on the air back in 1996, and a Spanish-language
station on 97.1 is still being widely heard as well.

The New Britain Rock Cats have added Hartford's WPOP (1410)
to their broadcast network. Down the coast in the New London
area, 1510 remains off the air, while its sister FM station in
East Lyme has technically changed calls from WNLC-FM to WNLC(FM).
And Groton's WSUB (980) and WQGN (105.5) have moved studios;
they're now in new digs at 7 Governor Winthrop Blvd. in New London.

From the call-letter desk: Entercom's WBBF (950) in Rochester
has applied to ditch the calls it's held since 1953 and become
WEZO, another heritage set of Rochester calls. The WBBF calls
will move to what's now WKLX (98.9), which is already going by
"99-BBF" on the air. The new 96.1 in Norwood has been
assigned the sequential calls WAZV. A handful of new LPTV calls:
W34BT Watertown, which is supposed to sign on soon, becomes WBQZ-LP.
Craig Fox's "The Box" LPTVs in Rochester and Syracuse
switch from W15AL and W35AQ to WBXO-LP and WOBX-LP, respectively.
W56CV in Niles becomes WTVU-LP. And we hear the soon-to-be PaxNet
station in Syracuse will be WSPX, instead of WAUP, when it hits
the airwaves.

The Sound of Life folks have turned on their latest station
in the Hudson Valley. WHVP (91.1) in Hudson took to the airwaves
this week. Meantime, the North Country may have lost an AM station.
We hear the "FSR Network" is no longer IDing WIGS (1230
Gouverneur) along with WGIX (95.3 Gouverneur) and WSLB (1400
Ogdensburg).

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2008 by Scott Fybush.